428 



THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



Spiked ! 



Extreme 

 danger. 



Reef, which now began to near the coast. At sunset 

 on the nth of June, he saw the first coral shoal. He 

 decided " to stretch off all night, as well to avoid the 

 dangers we saw ahead, as to see if any islands lay in the 

 offing, especially as we now began to draw near the Latitude 

 of those discovered by Quiros, which some geographers, for 

 what reason I know not, have thought proper to tack to this 

 land." It was conceivable that he might see Espiritu Santo ! 



It was a clear moonlight night, and he sailed with a fine 

 breeze of wind. The water deepened from twelve fathoms 

 to twenty-one, and then suddenly fell to twelve, ten, eight. 

 Cook ordered all to their stations, and prepared to anchor. 

 But again they had twenty and twenty-one fathoms, and 

 continued in that depth until a few minutes before 1 1 p.m., 

 when they had seventeen ; and, before the man at the head 

 could heave another cast, the ship struck. Banks, thinking 

 the danger past, had gone to bed in perfect security ; 

 "but," he writes, "scarcely were we warm in our beds 

 when we were called up with the alarming news of the 

 ship being fast upon a rock, of which she in a few minutes 

 convinced us by beating very violently against it. ... We 

 were upon sunken coral rocks, the most dreadful of all 

 on account of their sharp points and grinding quality, 

 which cut through a ship's bottom almost immediately." 



Cook " was upon deck in his drawers as the second 

 blow was struck, and gave his orders with his wonted 

 coolness and precision." l The ship had struck " about 

 the top of high water" at II p.m. The hope was 

 to get off at the next high tide. They threw over- 

 board forty or fifty tons, but the ship was not afloat 

 by a foot or more. 2 The tide again ebbed, and 



1 So writes Brougham, giving the gist of a conversation with Banks. 

 " I have heard Sir Joseph Banks describe his (Cook's) habit of nightly 

 making all the arrangements, and giving all the orders which he deemed 

 necessary when running along an unknown coast, and having a lee-shore 

 under his bow. After the usual direction to call him if anything 

 occurred, he would then calmly undress and go to bed, and he was 

 immediately asleep. Upon that trying occasion he was upon deck 

 in his drawers as the second blow was struck.". 



2 " It is now known that on this coast it is only every alternate tide 

 that rises to a full height " (Wharton, p. 276). 



